Found and held by Love

It was in last night’s phone call that he said it. Our oldest-of-four sons was talking with his dad, and there it came. “God let me weave my own web,” he said, “so that it would hold me.”

So that it would hold me. God let me.

We looked at the phone, we looked at each other, and then we exclaimed. “That’s profound, son! And that’ll preach.”

For years, he had been absent from the family circle, pulling a Jonah move and running from God. Not on the high seas, mind you, but on the mean streets far away.

For years we had prayed and waited, waited and prayed, longing for him to come home. “He’s not a throwaway kid to me,” I would tell the Almighty. Unwilling to give up on him, unwilling to accept defeat, I would present my two requests and return to my life and duties, finding peace, finding strength, finding joy.

Lost. That’s what he was. Lost to us, but then one hot September night, he’d been found.

The finding of him saved his life. I knew it then, and I know it now, and I do not doubt it. And he was right. In his time on the streets, he’d created a real mess. He’d woven a tangled web that could have put him behind bars for years; so tangled that at long last, he could not slip away and continue the awful weaving. Caught, at last, by divine hands.

In God’s great Lost and Found Box, there is mercy. For the Hands that apprehend are the Hands that have guided and the Hands that are working redemption. From the worst of messed-up tangles come the most beautiful pictures, and the truth is revealed on the top. Looking up at the tapestry from the bottom, it’s obscure, knotted, confusing, and ugly. But flip it over, and the glory’s revealed.

That’s my son. And that’s how I know that there’s never a reason for despair. Oh, it will feel like it, but that’s all it is–it’s a feeling.

If God could catch my running-away son and hold him, He can do it for you and for yours. Jordan now tells others about this wild mercy of God. He gives thanks for the web that held him and the grace that found him. We give thanks, for the lost has been found…found and held by Love.

I just wanted to tell you this today.